Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America. At the outbreak of war, he joined the French Air Force (Armée de l'Air), flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised from the French Air Force, he travelled to the United States to persuade its government to enter the war against Nazi Germany. Following a 27-month hiatus in North America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, he joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, although he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health. He disappeared over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission in July 1944, and is believed to have died at that time.

Prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry had achieved fame in France as an aviator. His literary works – among them The Little Prince, translated into over 250 languages and dialects – posthumously boosted his stature to national hero status in France.[7][8] He earned further widespread recognition with international translations of his other works. His 1939 philosophical memoir Terre des hommes—Man and His World became the name of an international humanitarian group, and was also used to create the central theme of the most successful world's fair of the 20th century, Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[9]

Birthplace of Saint-Exupéry in the Presqu'île section of Lyon, on the street now named after him, in blue at lower left.

Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon to an aristocratic Catholic family that could trace its lineage back several centuries. He was the third of five children of the Countess Marie de Fonscolombe and Count Jean de Saint Exupéry (1863–1904) .[10][11][Note 2] His father, an executive of the Le Soleil (The Sun) insurance brokerage, died of a stroke in Lyon's La Foux train station before his son's fourth birthday. His father's death had sadly affected the entire family, transforming their status to that of 'impoverished aristocrats'.[13]

Saint-Exupéry had three sisters and a younger blond-haired brother, François, who at age 15 would tragically die of rheumatic fever contracted while both were attending the MarianistCollege Villa St. Jean in Fribourg, Switzerland, during World War I. Saint-Exupéry attended to his brother, his closest confidant, beside François' death bed, and later wrote that François "...remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a [young] tree falls", imagery which would much later be recrafted into the climactic ending of The Little Prince. At age 17, now the only "man" in the family following the death of his brother, the young author was left as distraught as his mother and sisters, but he soon assumed the mantle of a protector and took to consoling them.[14]

After twice failing his final exams at a preparatory Naval Academy (intentionally, some believe), Saint-Exupéry entered the École des Beaux-Arts as an auditor to study architecture for 15 months, again without graduating, and then fell into the habit of accepting odd jobs. In 1921, Saint-Exupéry began his military service as a basic-rank soldier with the 2e Régiment de chasseurs à cheval (2nd Regiment of light cavalry) and was sent to Neuhof, near Strasbourg.[15] While there he took private flying lessons and the following year was offered a transfer from the French Army to the French Air Force. He received his pilot's wings after being posted to the 37th Fighter Regiment in Casablanca, Morocco. Later, being reposted to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Le Bourget on the outskirts of Paris, and then experiencing the first of his many aircraft crashes, Saint-Exupéry bowed to the objections of the family of his fiancée, future novelist Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin, and left the air force to take an office job. The couple ultimately broke off their engagement and he worked at several more odd jobs without success over the next few years.

By 1926, Saint-Exupéry was flying again. He became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments. Later he complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots. He worked for Aéropostale between Toulouse and Dakar, and then also became the airline stopover manager for the Cape Juby airfield in the Spanish zone of South Morocco, in the Sahara desert. His duties included negotiating the safe release of downed fliers taken hostage by hostile Moors, a perilous task which earned him his first Légion d'honneur from the French Government.

In 1929, Saint-Exupéry was transferred to Argentina, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline. He surveyed new air routes across South America, negotiated agreements, and even occasionally flew the airmail as well as search missions looking for downed fliers. This period of his life is briefly explored in Wings of Courage, an IMAX film by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud.[16]

Saint-Exupéry photographed near Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in May 1942, on a speaking tour in support of France after its armistice with Germany. Despite his appearance, he had been beset with stress and bedridden with cholecystitis.[17][18]

Saint-Exupéry's first novella, L'Aviateur (The Aviator), was published in a short-lived literary magazine Le Navire d'Argent (The Silver Ship).[19] In 1929, his first book, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail) was published; his career as an aviator and journalist was about to begin. That same year, Saint-Exupéry flew the Casablanca—Dakar route.

The 1931 publication of Vol de nuit (Night Flight) established Saint-Exupéry as a rising star in the literary world. It was the first of his major works to gain widespread acclaim and won the prix Femina. The novel mirrored his experiences as a mail pilot and director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[20] That same year, at Grasse, Saint-Exupéry married Consuelo Suncin (née Suncín Sandoval), a twice-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist, who possessed a bohemian spirit and a "viper's tongue". Saint-Exupéry, thoroughly enchanted by the diminutive woman, would leave and then return to her many times – she was both his muse and, over the long term, the source of much of his angst.[21] It was a stormy union, with Saint-Exupéry travelling frequently and indulging in numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé (1908–2003), known as "Nelly" and referred to as "Madame de B." in Saint-Exupéry biographies.[22][Note 3] Vogüé became Saint-Exupéry's literary executrix after his death, and also wrote her own Saint-Exupéry biography under a pseudonym, Pierre Chevrier.[24]

Saint-Exupéry continued to write until the spring of 1943, when he left the United States with American troops bound for North Africa in the Second World War.

On 30 December 1935, at 2:45 a.m., after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his mechanic-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan desert,[25] during an attempt to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race and win a prize of 150,000 francs.[26][Note 4] The crash site is thought to have been near the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.[27]

Both Saint-Exupéry and Prévot miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous, leaving them with no idea of their location. Lost among the sand dunes, their sole supplies were grapes, two oranges, a thermos of sweet coffee, chocolate, a handful of crackers, and a small ration of wine. The pair had only one day's worth of liquid.[28] They both began to see mirages and experience auditory hallucinations, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives.[26] The near brush with death would figure prominently in his 1939 memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, winner of several awards. Saint-Exupéry's classic novella The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is, in part, a reference to this experience.

After France's armistice with Germany, Saint-Exupéry went into exile in North America, escaping through Portugal. He arrived in New York City on the last day of 1940, with the intention of convincing the U.S. to enter the conflict against Nazi Germany quickly.[29] On 14 January 1941, at a Hotel Astor author luncheon attended by approximately 1,500, he belatedly received his National Book Award for Wind, Sand and Stars, won a year earlier while he was occupied witnessing the destruction of the French Army.[30] Consuelo followed him to New York City several months later after a chaotic migration to the southern French town of Oppède, where she lived in an artist's commune, the basis of her autobiography, Kingdom of the Rocks: Memories of Oppède.[31][32]

Some researchers have implied that during his stay in the United States, Saint-Exupéry became intimate with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of the famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh. Ironically, while his intention was to convince the U.S. Government of the need to fight fascism, both Anne and her husband Charles were strongly advocating against American intervention in the European war. Anne wrote a 41-page booklet, The Wave of the Future, in support of her husband, who was lobbying for a U.S.–German peace treaty similar to Stalin's treaty with Hitler. The Roosevelt administration subsequently attacked The Wave of the Future as "the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and Appeaser", and the booklet became one of the most despised writings of the period.[35]

Two editions of The Little Prince (lower left and upper right, artwork not shown) on display at the Saint-Exupéry exhibit at the Air and Space Museum in Paris, France. Also, upper left: Lettre à un otage (Letter to a Hostage), and bottom right: Pilote de guerre (English version: Flight to Arras).

With further irony, Saint-Exupéry and Charles Lindbergh both became P-38 pilots during World War II, with a disgraced Lindbergh fighting surreptitiously in the Pacific War,[36] and with Saint-Exupéry fighting and dying very publicly over the Mediterranean.[37]

It was after Saint-Exupéry's arrival in the United States that the author adopted the hyphen within his surname, as he was annoyed with Americans addressing him as "Mr. Exupéry".[4] It was also during this period that he authored Pilote de guerre (Flight to Arras), which earned widespread acclaim, and Lettre à un otage (Letter to a Hostage), dedicated to the 40 million French living under Nazi oppression, plus numerous shorter pieces in support of France. The Saint-Exupérys also resided in Quebec City, Canada for several weeks during the late spring of 1942, during which time they met a precocious eight-year-old boy with blond curly hair, Thomas, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck, with whom the Saint-Exupérys resided.[38][39][Note 5]

After he returned from his stay in Quebec, which had been fraught with illness and stress, the French wife of one of his publishers helped persuade Saint-Exupéry to produce a children's book,[40] hoping to calm his nerves and also compete with the new series of Mary Poppins stories by P.L. Travers. Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated The Little Prince in New York City and the village of Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with the manuscript being completed in October.[38] It would be first published months later in early 1943 in both English and French in the United States, and would only later appear in his native homeland posthumously after the liberation of France, as his works had been banned by the collaborationist Vichy Regime.[41][42][Note 6]

In April 1943, following his 27 months in North America, Saint-Exupéry departed with an American military convoy for Algiers, to fly with the Free French Air Force and fight with the Allies in a Mediterranean-based squadron. Then 43, soon to be promoted to the rank of commandant (major), he was far older than most men in operational units. Although eight years over the age limit for such pilots, he had petitioned endlessly for an exemption which had finally been approved by General Dwight Eisenhower. However, Saint-Exupéry had been suffering pain and immobility due to his many previous crash injuries, to the extent that he could not dress himself in his own flight suit or even turn his head leftwards to check for enemy aircraft.[44]

Saint-Exupéry was assigned with a number of other pilots to his former unit, renammed Groupe de reconnaissance 2/33 "Savoie", flying F-5 Lightnings, which an officer described as "war-weary, non-airworthy craft".[45] The Lightnings were also more sophisticated than models he previously flew, requiring him to undertake seven weeks of stringent training before his first mission. After wrecking a P-38 through engine failure on his second mission, he was grounded for eight months, but was then later reinstated to flight duty on the personal intervention of General Ira Eaker, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces.[46][37][Note 7]

After Saint-Exupéry resumed flying, he also returned to his longtime habit of reading and writing while flying his single seat F-5B (a specially configured P-38 reconnaissance variant). His prodigious studies of literature gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before takeoff, with mechanics having warmed up and tested his aircraft for him in preparation for his flight. On one flight, to the chagrin of his colleagues awaiting his arrival, he circled the airport for an hour after returning, so that he could finish reading a novel. Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined notebook (carnet) during his long solitary flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on the world below him.[48]

Prior to his return to flight duties with his squadron in North Africa, the collaborationist Vichy Regime unilaterally promoted Saint-Exupéry as one of its members – quite a shock to the author. Subsequently, French General (later French President) Charles de Gaulle, whom Saint-Exupéry and others held in low regard, publicly implied that the author-pilot was supporting Germany. Depressed at this, he began to drink heavily.[49] Additionally, his health, both physically and mentally, had been deteriorating. Saint-Exupéry was said to be intermittently subject to depression, and there was discussion of taking him off flying status.[50][Note 8]

Saint-Exupéry's last assigned reconnaissance mission was to collect intelligence on German troop movements in and around the Rhone Valley preceding the Allied invasion of southern France ("Operation Dragoon"). Although he had been reinstated to his old squadron with the provision that he was to fly only five missions,[51] on 31 July 1944, he took off in an unarmed P-38 on his ninth reconnaissance mission from an airbase on Corsica.[Note 9] To the great alarm of the squadron compatriots who revered him, he did not return, dramatically vanishing without a trace.[53][Note 10] Word of his disappearance shortly spread across the literary world and then into international headlines.[54][37] A French woman reported much later having watched an aircraft crash around noon near the Bay of Carqueiranne off Toulon. An unidentifiable body in a French uniform was found several days after his disappearance east of the Frioul archipelago south of Marseille and buried in Carqueiranne in September.

In September 1998, Jean-Claude Bianco, a fisherman, found east of Riou Island, south of Marseille, a silver identity bracelet (gourmette) bearing the names of Saint-Exupéry and of his wife Consuelo[55] and his American publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, hooked to a piece of fabric, presumably from his flight suit.[24] The recovery of his bracelet was an emotional event in France, where Saint-Exupéry had by then assumed the mantle of a national icon, and some disputed its authenticity as it was found far from his intended flight path, implying that the aircraft might not have been shot down.[56]

In May 2000, Luc Vanrell, a diver, found the partial remains of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning spread over thousands of square metres of the seabed off the coast of Marseille, near where the bracelet was previously found. The discovery galvanized the country, which for decades had conducted searches for his aircraft and speculated on Saint-Exupéry's fate.[57] After a two-year delay imposed by the French government, the remnants of the aircraft were recovered in October 2003.[55][Note 11]

A landing gear of Saint-Exupéry's P-38 Lightning, recovered from the Mediterranean off the coast of France in 2003, displayed at the French Air and Space Museum

No marks or holes attributable to gunfire were found; however, that was not considered significant as only a small portion of the aircraft was recovered.[58] In June 2004, the fragments were given to the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget, Paris, where Saint-Exupéry's life is commemorated in a special exhibit.[60][61]

The location of the crash site and the bracelet are less than 80 km by sea from where the unidentified French serviceman was found in Carqueiranne, and it remains plausible, but has not been confirmed, that the body was carried there by sea currents after the crash over the course of several days.[citation needed]

In 1948, former Luftwaffe telegrapher Rev. Hermann Korth made public his war logs, noting an instance on July 31 around midday where a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 downed a P-38 Lightning, which ostensibly supported a shoot-down hypothesis for Saint-Exupéry.[62][63] Though popular in the 1960s and 70s, Korth’s log was met with skepticism, as it described aerial combat, which was inconsistent with the fact that Saint-Exupéry’s plane was unarmed.[62] Evidence exists, however, of a P-38 flown by Second Lieutenant Gene Meredith downed in combat on July 30 around the same location.[64][Note 12]

Luftwaffe reconnaissance pilot Robert Heichele was shot down on 16 August 1944 and died five days later; he is buried in the German military cemetery at Dagneux, France.[66] Issue No. 725 of the German magazine Der Landser quoted a purported letter from Heichele in which he claimed to have shot down a P-38 on 31 July 1944. The credibility of this letter is suspect because it claims that Heichele and his wingman were flying the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 D-9, a variant which had not yet entered Luftwaffe service.[67] The letter also claims that the hostile aircraft initiated an attack on the Germans, whereas Saint-Exupéry was flying an unarmed F-5 reconnaissance variant. In the lists held by the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, no victory is accredited to Heichele or his unit in July or August 1944; the decrypted report of the day's reconnaissance missions by the parent formation, Fliegerdivision 2, does not include any flights by 2./NAG 13's Fw 190s.[68]

In 2008, a French journalist from La Provence, investigating Saint-Exupéry's death, contacted hundreds of former Luftwaffe pilots, eventually getting an account from Horst Rippert, who believed he shot down Saint-Exupéry.[60][69][70] After the war, Rippert's memoirs expressed both fears and doubts that he was responsible, but in 2003 he stated he became certain when he learned the location of Saint-Exupéry’s wreckage.[71] Rippert stated he reported the kill over his radio, but no documents exist to verify his account.[63][64][Note 13]

Former Luftwaffe comrades reacted with skepticism to Rippert's claim, as he held it private for 64 years.[72][73][Note 14] Two French and German books discuss the alleged Saint-Exupéry shoot-down.[74][75] Very little German documentation survived the war, and contemporary archival sources, consisting of Allied intercepts of Luftwaffe signals, offer no evidence to verify Rippert’s account.[76][77][76] Thus, Rippert’s claim remains a hypothesis until proven otherwise, and the cause of Saint-Exupéry’s death remains unknown.[64][78]

While not precisely autobiographical, much of Saint-Exupéry's work is inspired by his experiences as a pilot. One notable example is his novella, The Little Prince, a poetic tale self-illustrated in watercolours in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The Little Prince is a philosophical story, including societal criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. One biographer wrote of his most famous work: "Rarely have an author and a character been so intimately bound together as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince," and remarking of their dual fates, "...the two remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky." [24] Saint-Exupéry's notable literary works (published English translations in brackets) are constituted by:[79]

During the 1930s, Saint-Exupéry led a mixed life as an aviator, journalist, author and publicist for Air France, Aéropostale's successor. His journalistic writings for Paris-Soir, Marianne and other newspapers covered events in Indochina and the Far East (1934), the Mediterranean, Soviet Union and Moscow (1935), and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1937). Saint-Exupéry additionally wrote a number of shorter pieces, essays and commentaries for various other newspapers and magazines.[87]

Notable among those during World War II was "An Open Letter to Frenchmen Everywhere", which was highly controversial in its attempt to rally support for France against Nazi oppression at a time when the French were sharply divided between support of the Gaullists and Vichy factions. It was published in The New York Times Magazine in November 1942,[88] in its original French in Le Canada, de Montréal at the same time, and in Pour la Victoire the following month.[80] Other shorter pieces include (in French except where translated by others to English):[84][88]

Pilote de guerre (Flight To Arras), describing the German invasion of France, was slightly censored when it was released in its original French in his homeland, by removing a derogatory remark made of Hitler (which French publisher Gallimard failed to reinsert in subsequent editions after World War II). However, shortly after the book's release in France, Nazi appeasers and Vichy supporters objected to its praise of one of Saint-Exupéry's squadron colleagues, Captain Jean Israël, who was portrayed as being amongst the squadron's bravest defenders during the Battle of France. In support of their German occupiers and masters, Vichy authorities attacked the author as a defender of Jews (in racist terms) leading to the praised book being banned in France, along with prohibitions against further printings of Saint-Exupéry's other works.[42] Prior to France's liberation new printings of Saint-Exupéry's works were made available there only by means of covert print runs,[42][41] such as that of February 1943 when 1,000 copies of an underground version of Pilote de guerre were printed in Lyon.[89]

A further complication occurred due to Saint-Exupéry's and others' view of General Charles de Gaulle, who was held in low regard. Early in the war, de Gaulle became the leader of the Free French Forces in exile, with his headquarters in London. Even though both men were working to free France from Nazi occupation, Saint-Exupéry viewed de Gaulle with apprehension as a possible post-war dictator, and consequently provided no public support to the General. In response, de Gaulle struck back at the author by implying that the author was a German supporter, and then had his literary works banned in France's North African colonies. Saint-Exupéry's writings were, with irony, banned simultaneously in both occupied France and Free France.[24][90]

Due to Saint-Exupéry's wartime death, his estate received the civil code designation Mort pour la France (English: Died for France), which was applied by the French Government in 1948. Amongst the law's provisions is an increase of 30 years to the duration of the original copyright's duration of 70 years;[91] thus most of Saint-Exupéry's creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30 years.[92]

Saint-Exupéry is commemorated with an inscription in the Panthéon in Paris, France's repository of historical greats. Although his body was never identified, his name was added to the Panthéon in November 1967 by a French legislative act. The inscription reads: "A LA MÉMOIRE DE • ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY • POÈTE ROMANCIER AVIATEUR • DISPARU AU COURS D'UNE MISSION • DE RECONNAISSANCE AÉRIENNE • LE 31 JUILLET 1944" (To the memory of Antoine de Saint Exupery, poet, novelist, aviator, missing during an aerial reconnaissance mission, 31 July 1944). Amongst other honours from France, he was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in April 1930, promoted to an Officier de la Légion d'honneur in January 1939 and also posthumously awarded the Croix de guerre avec Palme in 1944.

From 1993 until the introduction of the euro, Saint-Exupéry's portrait and several of his drawings from The Little Prince appeared on France's 50-franc banknote.[24] The French Government also later minted a 100-franc commemorative coin, with Saint-Exupéry on its obverse side, and the Little Prince on its reverse. Brass-plated souvenir Monnaie de Paris commemorative medallions were also created in his honour, depicting the pilot's portrait over the P-38 Lightning aircraft he last flew.

In 2000, on the centenary of his birth, in the city where he was born, the Lyon Satolas Airport was renamed the Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport in his honour. Lyon's TGV bullet train station was also renamed as Gare de Lyon Saint-Exupéry. The author is additionally commemorated by a statue in Lyon, depicting a seated Saint-Exupéry with the little prince standing behind him.

A street in Montesson, a suburb of Paris, is named for him as Rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Museum exhibits, exhibitions and theme villages dedicated to both him and his diminutive Little Prince have been created in Le Bourget, Paris and other locations in France, as well as in the Republic of South Korea, Japan, Morocco, Brazil, the United States and Canada.

The Air and Space Museum at Paris's Le Bourget Airport, in cooperation with The Estate of Saint-Exupéry-d'Agay, have created a permanent exhibit of 300 m² dedicated to the author, pilot, person and humanist. The Espace Saint Exupéry exhibit, officially inaugurated on the aviator's birthday in 2006,[93] traces each stage of his life as an airmail pioneer, eclectic intellectual-artist and military pilot. It includes artifacts from his life: photographs, his drawings, letters, some of his original notebooks (carnets) he scribbled in voluminously and which were later published posthumously, plus remnants of the unarmed P-38 he flew on his last reconnaissance mission and which were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea.[94]

In Tarfaya, Morocco, next to the Cape Juby airfield where Saint-Exupéry was based as an Aéropostale airmail pilot/station manager, an exhibit was created honouring both him and the company. A small monument at the airfield is also dedicated to them.

In São Paulo, Brazil, through 2009, the Oca Art Exhibition Centre presented Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince as part of The Year of France and The Little Prince. The displays covered over 10,000 m² on four floors, and chronicled Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince and their philosophies, as visitors passed through theme areas of the desert, asteroids, stars and the cosmos. The ground floor of the giant exhibition was laid out as a huge map of the routes flown by the author with Aeropostale in South America and around the world. Also included was a full-scale replica of the author's crashed Caudron Simoun, lying wrecked on the ground of a simulated Libyan desert following his disastrous Paris-Saigon race attempt. The miraculous survival of Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic/navigator was subsequently chronicled in the award-winning memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes), and also formed the introduction of his most famous work The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince).[96]

In 2011, the City of Toulouse, France, home of Airbus and the pioneering airmail carrier Aéropostale, in conjunction with the Estate of Saint-Exupéry-d'Agay and the Youth Foundation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, hosted a major exposition on Saint-Exupéry and his experience with Aéropostale. The exposition, titled L'année Antoine de Saint-Exupéry à Toulouse, exhibited selected personal artifacts of the author-aviator, including gloves, photos, posters, maps, manuscripts, drawings, models of the aircraft he flew, some of the wreckage from his Sahara Desert plane crash, and the personal silver identification bracelet engraved with his and Consuelo's name, presented by his U.S. publisher, which was recovered from his last, ultimate crash site in the Mediterranean Sea.[97]

On 27 February 2012, Russia's Ulyanovsk State University inaugurated its new International Saint-Exupéry Centre, led by its Director, Elena Mironova, an associate professor of French. The center will serve as a permanent museum dedicated to the author-aviator, as well as a cultural and linguistics center for the university. The museum was established with the assistance of Civil Aviation College teacher Nikolai Yatsenko, an author of 12 publications on Saint-Exupéry who personally donated some 6,000 related items. Located in Ulyanovsk, the university's new center will also help support the study of international languages in a city which promotes itself as a major aerospace and cultural centre. The centre's opening was attended by Ulyanovsk Governor Sergey Morozov, Sergey Krasnov of the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation College and other aerospace and academic dignitaries, as well as Veronique Jober, Sorbonne professor of Slavic languages, who addressed the audience by video link from Paris.[98][99]

A number of other prominent exhibitions were created in France and the United States, many of them in 2000, honouring the centenary of the author-aviator's birth.

«Être homme, c'est précisément être responsable. C'est sentir, en posant sa pierre, que l'on contribue à bâtir le monde» (to be a man is to be responsible, to feel that by laying one's own stone, one contributes to building the world)

”

Additionally, Michèle Lalonde and André Prévost's oratorioTerre des hommes, performed at the Place des Nations opening ceremonies and attended by the international delegates of the participating countries, strongly projected the French writer's 'idealist rhetoric'. The Countess de Saint Exupéry (1901–1979), Saint-Exupéry's widow, was also a guest of honour at the opening ceremonies of the world's fair.[105]

Asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupéry, discovered in November 1975 by Russian astronomer Tamara Smirnova and provisionally cataloged as Asteroid 1975 VW3, was renamed in the author-aviator's honour. Another asteroid was named as 46610 Bésixdouze (translated to and from both hexidecimal and French as 'B612'). Additionally the terrestrial-asteroid protection organization B612 Foundation was named in tribute to the author's Little Prince, who fell to Earth from Asteroid B-612.

Philatelic tributes have been printed in at least 25 other countries as of 2011.[106] Only three years after his death, the pilot-aviator was first featured on an 8 franc French West Africa airmail stamp (Scott Catalog # C11). France followed several months later in 1948 with an 80 franc airmail stamp honouring him (CB1), and later with another stamp honouring both him and airmail pioneer Jean Mermoz, plus the supersonic Concorde passenger airliner, in 1970 (C43).[106] In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the writer's death, Israel issued a stamp honoring "Saint-Ex" and The Little Prince in 1994.[107]

In Argentina and Brazil, where Saint-Exupéry became the founding director of the pioneering South American airmail airline Aeroposta Argentina:

In June 2009, the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation (FASEJ) was founded in Paris by the Saint-Exupéry–d'Agay Estate, to promote education, art, culture, health and sports for youth worldwide, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This organization, which follows Saint-Exupéry's philosophies and his memory, was financed in part by the sale of one of his original 1936 handwritten manuscripts at a Sotheby's auction for €312,750.[8][111]

Numerous public schools, lycées, high schools, colleges and technical schools have been named in honour of Saint-Exupéry across France, Europe, Québec and South America, as well as at least two in Africa. The École Antoine de Saint-Exupéry de Kigali, a French international school in Rwanda, is named after him, as is École Francaise Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Saint Louis, Senegal [112][113]

Saint-Exupéry and his wife Consuelo were portrayed by Bruno Ganz and Miranda Richardson in the 1997 biopic Saint-Ex, a British film biography of the French author-pilot. It also featured Eleanor Bron and was filmed and distributed in the United Kingdom, with scripting by Frank Cottrell Boyce. The film combines elements of biography, documentary, and dramatic recreation.

A 2004 German short dramatic film, "Der letzte Flug" (The Last Flight), portrays a fictional Luftwaffe pilot, Lieutenant Henrici Müller, who returns to his airbase on 31 July 1944 after having shot down a reconnaissance version Lightning during a mission to Corsica. He learns in the film's final moments that the missing pilot is Saint-Exupéry. The same Lufwaffe pilot is shown as an elderly man reminiscing that fateful day. He concludes the drama by reciting the final paragraph from The Little Prince. The 11-minute film was directed and written by Roger Moench, and starred André Hennicke.[117]

After his disappearance, Consuelo de Saint Exupéry wrote The Tale of the Rose, which was published in 2000 and subsequently translated into 16 languages.[118]

Saint-Exupéry is mentioned in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff: "A saint in short, true to his name, flying up here at the right hand of God. The good Saint-Ex! And he was not the only one. He was merely the one who put it into words most beautifully and anointed himself before the altar of the right stuff."

In 2000, Jean-Pierre de Villers wrote a novella telling the imagined story of Saint-Exupéry's last flight, The Last Flight of the Little Prince.[119]

Saint-Exupéry is the subject of the 2013 historical novel Studio Saint-Ex (Knopf, New York / Penguin, Canada) by Ania Szado. In the novel Saint-Exupéry awaits the Americans' entry into World War II, while writing The Little Prince in New York.

In August 2011, the world premiere of Saint-Ex, a theatrical production of Saint-Exupéry's life, was launched at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont. The live theatre musical explores in drama and song the aviator-author's early life, the aerial band-of-brothers he flew with at Aéropostale, and the raucous relations between him and his fiery Latin writer-artist wife, born Consuelo Suncín Sandoval Zeceña.[120][121] The production was written by the husband and wife team of lyricist Sean Barry and composer Jenny Giering, and staged with the assistance of director Matt Castle and set designer Tim Mackabee, plus choreography by Jennifer Turey. The leading cast members include Alexander Gemignani (playing Saint-Exupéry), Krysta Rodriguez (playing his tempestuous wife Consuelo), Cass Morgan (Saint-Exupéry's mother, author Countess Marie de Fonscolombe), plus Charlie Brady (Aéropostale pilot and Air France director Henri Guillaumet).[120][121] Although the musical production successfully debuted on 25 August 2011, the theatre was soon deluged with two-to-four metres of water generated by Hurricane Irene, which struck the east coast of the United States three days later. After pumping the floodwaters from the building and partially restoring the costumes and stage sets, the musical production "resurfaced" on 2 September.[122]

^Standard modern usage for the spelling of Saint-Exupéry's surname includes the hyphen. But according to French legal documents and his birth certificate, no hyphen is used in his name; thus, it is formally de Saint Exupéry, not Saint-Exupéry. The Armorial de l'ANF,[5] which is a listing of French nobility, mentions the Saint Exupéry (de) family without a hyphen. However, both spellings are found for the author's relatives in the advanced research facility Géopatronyme, for records in the Rhône department for the period 1891–1915, showing two birth certificates with a hyphen and one without. Most of his books were published under his name with a hyphen; memorial plaques, the 50-franc banknote, and the bracelet he was wearing at the time of his death also use the hyphen. The author adopted the hyphen after his arrival in the United States in 1941, as he was annoyed with Americans' addressing him as "Mr. Exupéry".

^Saint-Exupéry was born at No. 8 rue Peyrat . later rue Alphonse Fochier, and still later renamed as Rue de Saint Exupéry in Lyon's 2nd arrondissement.[10] He was the third of five children (and nicknamed 'Tonio'), after older sisters Marie-Madeleine ('Biche', b. 26/01/1897–1927), Simone ('Monot', 26/01/1898–1978), and his younger siblings François (1902–1917) and Gabrielle ('Didii', 1903–1986). His father and mother were Count Jean de Saint Exupéry (1863–1904; different sources name his father as Jean-Marc or Caesar de Saint Exupéry[12]) and Countess Marie, née Boyer de Fonscolombe (1875–1972). He was baptized in a Catholic ceremony in his great-aunt's chapel on 15 August 1900 in Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens; his godfather was his uncle, Roger de Saint Exupéry, Earl of Miremont (1865 – August 1914, killed leading his battalion in Maissin, Belgium, during the First World War), and his godmother was his aunt Madeleine Fonscolombe.[11]

^Hélène (Nelly) de Vogüé (1908–2003), born Hélène Jaunez to a French businessman, became a well known French business executive and also an intellectual fluent in several languages. She married the equally well known French noble, Jean de Vogüé, in 1927 and had one child with him, a son named Patrice. Hélène is referred to only as "Madame de B." in multiple Saint-Exupéry biographies. This occurred due to agreements she made with writers before granting them access to her troves of the author-aviator's writings, which she deposited in the French national archives – from which they will not be released until 2053. It is believed she sought her anonymity in order to protect Saint-Exupéry's reputation, as during the Second World War, the U.S. O.S.S. suspected she was a secret Vichy agent and Nazi collaborator.[23]

^The aircraft Saint-Exupéry was flying when he crashed in the Sahara was a Caudron C.630 Simoun, Serial Number 7042, with the French registration F-ANRY, with 'F' being the international designator for France, and the remainder being derived from 'ANtoine de saint-exupéRY'.

^The large home of Charles De Koninck has since been classified as a historical building and has been visited frequently by numerous worldwide personalities from academic, scientific, intellectual, and political circles. Thomas kept a few memories from Saint-Exupéry's visit: "[He was] a great man. He was the aviator. Someone we would get attached to quite easily, who would show interest in us, the kids. He would make us paper planes, drawings. [...] He loved mathematical enigmas." The following year, he published The Little Prince. According to the local legend, Saint-Exupéry received his inspiration from the junior De Koninck, who asked many questions. However, Thomas De Koninck denied this interpretation: "The Little Prince is Saint-Exupéry himself."

^Although Saint-Exupéry's regular publisher in France, Gallimard, lists Le Petit Prince as being published in 1946, that apparently is a legalistic interpretation possibly designed to allow for an extra year of the novella's copyright protection period, and is based on Gallimard's explanation that sales of the book started only in 1946. Other sources, such as the one referenced, depict the first Librairie Gallimard printing of 12,250 copies as occurring on 30 November 1945.[43]

^After being grounded following his crash, Saint-Exupéry spared no efforts in his campaign to return to active combat flying duty. He utilized all his contacts and powers of persuasion to overcome his age and physical handicap barriers, which would have completely barred an ordinary patriot from serving as a war pilot. Instrumental in his reinstatement was an agreement he proposed to John Phillips, a fluently bilingual Life Magazine correspondent in February 1944, where Saint-Exupéry committed to "...write, and I'll donate what I do to you, for your publication, if you get me reinstated into my squadron."[47] Phillips later met with a high level U.S. Army Air Forces press officer in Italy, Colonel John Reagan McCrary, who conveyed the Life Magazine request to General Eaker. The approval for return to flying status would be made "...not through favoritism, but through exception". The brutalized French, it was noted, would cut a German's throat "...probably with more relish than anybody".

^Saint-Exupéry suffered recurring pain and immobility from multiple previous injuries due to his five serious aircraft crashes. After his death, there were also vague suggestions that his disappearance was the result of suicide rather than aircraft failure or combat loss.

^Various sources state that his final flight was either his seventh, eight, ninth, and even his 10th mission. He volunteered for almost every proposed mission submitted to his squadron, and protested fiercely after being grounded following his second sortie, which ended with a demolished P-38. Saint-Exupéry's friends, colleagues and compatriots were actively working to keep him grounded and out of harm's way, but his connections in high places, plus a publishing agreement with Life Magazine, were instrumental in having the grounding lifted.[52]

^One ruse contemplated by GR II/33's commanders was to expose Saint-Exupéry "accidentally" to the plans of the pending invasion of France so he could be subsequently grounded. No air force general would countermand such a grounding order and risk Saint-Exupéry's being captured by the Germans if he were forced down. Saint-Exupéry's commanding officer – a close friend of his – was ill and absent when the author took off on his final flight. The commander "bawled out" his staff when he learned that a grounding scheme hadn't been implemented.

^Saint-Exupéry's P-38, as identified in Aéro-Re.L.I.C.'s detailed crash wreckage recovery report, was an F-5B-1-LO, LAC 2734 variant, serial number 42-68223, which departed Borgo-Porreta, Bastia, Corsica, France on 31 July 1944, at 8h 45m (8:45 a.m.). The report is eight pages long, broken into six technical sections, with five photographs, including an image of an identifying component serial number which verified the wreckage belonged to Saint-Exupéry's aircraft. Although the debris field, one kilometre long and 400 metres wide, was located in May 2000, it took over two years before the French government agreed to the organization's request to permit recovery of the crash debris from the seabed. It is believed that the wide distribution of crash wreckage which left hundreds of parts deposited on the sea floor was created by the Lightning striking the sea's surface at high velocity.[58]

^Lt. Meredith's remains were not recovered. He is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence, Italy ABMC Cemetery {ABMC Records}. Lt. Meredith was shot down by Feldwebel Guth of 3./Jagdgruppe 200, the same unit in which Hort Rippert (see below) was serving. Guth's victory claim is recorded in the lists held by the German Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv. The progress of the interception was followed by Allied radar and radio monitoring stations and documented in Missing Air Crew Report 7339 on the loss of Second Lieutenant Gene C. Meredith of the 23rd Photographic Squadron/5th Reconnaissance Group. The intercepted Mediterranean Allied Air Forces Signals Intelligence Report for 30 July records that "an Allied reconnaissance aircraft was claimed shot down at 1115 [GMT]".[65]

^The RAF's No. 276 Wing (Signals Intelligence, intercepted Luftwaffe communications) Operations Record Book for 31 July 1944 notes only: "... three enemy fighter sections between 0758/0929 hours operating in reaction to Allied fighters over Cannes, Toulon and the area to the North. No contacts. Patrol activity north of Toulon reported between 1410/1425 hours". Archive sources for Luftwaffe activity over Southern France on 30 and 31 July 1944 are cited in an extensive article on the Ghost Bombers aviation history webpage for the Saint-Exupéry episode.

^The proposed "suppression" of Rippert's claim due to Saint-Exupéry's stature was also met with skepticism as Luftwaffe pilots tended to immediately report their kills, and the Allies did not broadcast Saint-Exupéry's status as missing for at least two days.[64] After the war, Horst Rippert became a television journalist and led the ZDF sports department. He was the brother of German singer Ivan Rebroff. Rippert died in 2013.

^The French and English versions of this book (Terre des hommes/Wind, Sand and Stars) differed significantly, with Saint-Exupéry removing sections from the original French version he did not consider appropriate for its targeted U.S. audience, and adding new material specifically written for that group and translated into English, which he could not speak. Although it did not appear in its earliest editions of the English translation, An Appreciation was added to later printings, contributed by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and earlier published in The Saturday Review of Literature on 14 October 1939.[80]

^The last paragraph of Flying's book review of A Sense of Life incorrectly states that Saint-Exupéry's last mission was a bombing run, when in fact it was a photo-reconnaissance assignment for the pending invasion of Southern France.

^In exchange, Lindbergh contributed "An Appreciation" to the later printings of Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars, earlier published in The Saturday Review of Literature on 14 October 1939.[80]

^ ab"1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked as Work Which Failed to Get Due Recognition", The New York Times, 14 February 1940, p. 25. via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851–2007).

^"French Flier Gets Book Prize for 1939: Antoine de St. Exupery Able at Last to Receive ..." The New York Times, 15 January 1941, p. 6. via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851–2007).

^"Brief Chronograph Of Publications."LePetitPrince.net, 26 October 2011. Note: the earliest year of publication is given for either of the French or English versions. All of Saint-Exupéry's literary works were originally created in French (he could neither speak nor write English very well), but some of his writings were translated and published in English prior to their French publication.